Alec Saunders, Senior VP of Developer Relations at RIM, has gotten a lot of attention in the media over the last 24 hours about some tweets he wrote regarding sideloading apps on future builds of the PlayBook OS. Today, he has released a statement to clarify those tweets and reassure the developer community that sideloading is not going anywhere as a dev tool, but simply being modified to prevent piracy.

In a new blog post on the Inside BlackBerry Dev Blog, Saunders explains how starting with the next build on the PlayBook (we're assuming a 2.0.1.xxxx build) there will be a new feature implemented that will encrypt purchased apps to prevent them from being shared with non-paying parties.

This is great news for devs as not only will they not lose a valuable tool, but will also gain more security over where their apps are being loaded.

I just hope that the PB is still jailbreakable and sideloading will be made possible by that route.

Hello Joe, I've spoken to several BlackBerry PlayBook owners via the web, through varies media channels, social outlets, and the feeling I get from several members is that they feel confusion, and outright disdain.